Call for Arab Areas of Jerusalem to Be Severed After Bulldozer Attack

The Israeli deputy prime minister Haim Ramon today called for some Arab neighborhoods of east Jerusalem to be cut off from the city in the wake of the attack by a Palestinian construction worker who killed three people when he seized control of a bulldozer in the city center.

The attacker, Hussam Dwayat, 30, drove a large bulldozer from a construction site into oncoming traffic yesterday, crushing cars and toppling a bus before he was eventually shot dead at the wheel.

He was from the Sur Baher district of east Jerusalem and was the second Palestinian resident of Jerusalem to carry out a major attack in the city in the past four months.

Others in the government called for his family's house to be demolished.

Ramon said the route of the Israel's West Bank barrier should be changed to cut off the Arab areas of east Jerusalem. Ramon told Israel's Army Radio that the Arab districts of the city "were never in Jerusalem".

"They were annexed in 1967 and we call them Jerusalem, even though there is not one Jerusalemite there. No Israeli goes near them," he said. The districts should be treated as part of the West Bank, he said.

In the 1967 Six-Day War Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank. It then redrew the boundaries of the eastern side of Jerusalem, making it much larger and incorporating West Bank villages, and annexed the area, claiming the newly enlarged Jerusalem as its capital.

Ramon's words will reignite the debate within Israel about the future of Jerusalem which both Israel and the Palestinians claim as their capital. So far the barrier circles around east Jerusalem placing most of the city on the Israeli side and cutting it off from the West Bank. There is a strong force in Israeli politics that resists any attempt to divide Jerusalem.

Others including the prime minister, Ehud Olmert, proposed demolishing the family house of the attacker.

Olmert was quoted by one official as saying: "We must use a punishment that would deter. We have to act with a tough hand, to negate social rights and to destroy immediately the houses of every terrorist from Jerusalem."

Ehud Barak, the defence minister, also pressed for the demolition of Dwayat's house.

"Demolishing houses has a deterring effect that conveys an unequivocal message about Israel's determination to fight this," he said in a letter to the defence ministry's legal adviser.

Other suggestions include revoking the residency permits of the families of those carrying out terrorist attacks.

There have been demolitions of such houses in the past in Jerusalem, using a 1945 law that dates back to the British Mandate, but the policy was halted three years ago after it was decided to have no deterrent effect.

It appears that Dwayat was acting alone in yesterday's attack. He had a criminal record, which included drugs offenses. He had been previously married to a Jewish woman. Like many other Palestinians in east Jerusalem he had not received a building permit for his house and received a demolition order which was delayed after he paid fines worth tens of thousands of dollars.

The man's brother, Issam Dwayat, said he had not been linked to any of the armed groups. "My brother did not belong to any organization," he told the Israeli news website Ynet. "He wasn't even a religious person. After terror attacks he always used to say: 'What is this nonsense? Why do we need this?'"

But he added: "It was easy to irritate him. He had a criminal record for violent offenses and he was punished for this."

Police were at the family house today and told relatives to take down a mourning tent that had been set up. Police said all signs of mourning at the house were forbidden.